WHAT IS RIGHT WITH CHURCHES OF CHRIST

A college student turned in a paper to his sociology professor on “What’s Wrong with America.” The professor gave the student a good grade for his effort and then wrote a note on the essay that read: “Now write another essay and show what’s right with America.”

While it is appropriate that editors of religious journals make criticism a way of life, it is possible that we spend too much time with the negative. Too often we see only part of what Jeremiah saw in the whole. God told the prophet that he was “To tear up and to knock down, To destroy and to overthrow;” but he also told him “To build and to plant.” Jeremiah may have been a prophet of doom, even “the weeping prophet,” but he was also a confirmed optimist. In his letter to the exiles in Babylon he wrote of “plans for peace, not disaster,” and he tells how the Lord promises “I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.” And who can be more optimistic than Jeremiah, when, with Nebuchadnezzar’s army at Jerusalem’s gates and with himself in prison, he buys a field as a testimonial that God will yet act in history and return his people to Jerusalem where they will once more “buy fields, pay money, draw up deeds?”

We do not apologize for criticizing. The Lord knows we need more of it than we get! We are only saying that we must not lose sight of the good in our efforts to expose the evil. When we start listing the things that are wrong, it seems unending perhaps. But it is equally true that a list of what we believe to be right also grows lengthy. There is a subtle implication in the work of any reformer that he believes there is potentially more good than evil in what concerns him or he would not busy himself as he does. What man in his right mind would waste effort on a cause which he considers hopeless? Like Jeremiah, any reformer believes that there is hope, that there is more good than evil, and that victory is altogether possible.

The sincere and informed critic realizes that what is right, however much there is, is doomed for the scaffold if concerned people remain silent. Evil is determined to bury the good in silence. So the critic’s role is to confront the evil so as to give the good its chance. But this should cause the critic to be aware of the good and appreciative of it.

Those who serve us through criticism, and we include ourselves here, must realize that there are serious hazards in such a ministry. Perpetual declaiming is boring and tiresome. It soon seals all ears, and before long the calamity howlers are all lined up crying on each other’s shoulders and nobody paying them any mind. So reformers have a way of being right in their philosophy but blundering in their tactical errors.

As we look at what is right about those of us associated with Churches of Christ, it may be helpful that we realize that the problem of good and evil among us is very much as it is generally. Wrong is more glaring than the right because it is exceptional. It is the bad that makes news in any newspaper or telecast, for the good is commonplace. You will read of no reports of honest bank tellers, but only of the embezzlers. The TV newscast will make no mention of the vast majority of law-abiding citizens, which includes 98 % of the teenagers, but of hippie gangs, dope pushers, and purse-snatchers. It is a compliment to our society that evil things make news. The preacher who runs off with his secretary and plays the wheels at Reno makes news only because the vast majority of them live exemplary lives. Wrong is seen. Right is not. It is taken for granted.

In detailing what is good about us it would be improper to suggest that it is only ourselves that have such good. Indeed there is much more good about the entire religious world than there is bad. It minimizes no good that we may have achieved to concede the same to others. Yet there are things about the Churches of Christ that I believe to be distinctly praiseworthy. They are the reasons why I prefer to remain with the church of my youth.

The Churches of Christ are, first of all, made up of good and wonderful people. Surely many of the finest folk in the world are in our congregations. I refer to the old-fashioned virtues that have long characterized the best of middle America. Veracity, integrity, industry, and reliability are the rule rather than the exception. We believe in the sanctity of marriage and the sacredness of the home. More than ordinary effort is made toward bringing our children up to reverence God and respect their fellow man. Kindness, compassion, and hospitality are as marked among our people as any group I know.

We are, moreover, a deeply religious people. We take our spiritual responsibilities more seriously than most. We honor the authority of the scriptures, love Bible-centered preaching, and cherish the church as the body of Christ on earth. We sincerely rejoice in the saving of souls, and nothing would please us more than to see the entire world turn to Christ. We give of our time and money to a degree that testifies to the sincerity of our profession.

While any people can raise serious questions about whether their love for Jesus is as strong as their love for party, I believe those within Churches of Christ are as intent upon pleasing the Master as any. So many among us are deeply Christ-loving and Christ-dedicated. As weak and sinful as we surely are in many ways, we are still a people that is conscious of the will of God in our lives.

As parochial as we are in some ways, we are still a freedom-loving and liberal-minded folk. There is a strong anti-intellectual element among us, and yet we produce some of the finest minds in the nation. Our colleges are distinctly sectarian in their educational approach (though this is waning), but still one can manage to get himself a first-rate education. We have run off a lot of good minds, true, but we still have many who have refused to leave, which speaks well for us as well as for them. We are yet a frontier people, full of the spirit of adventure, tough-minded and committed to the future. In some ways we try real hard to be little, but in soul we are still big, like the out-of-doors.

Since we are yet a youthful community it is understandable that some of our behavior is immature. What is important is that we are growing. We have fears and uncertainties that do not become us, but there is deep inside us that courage that bears us along to those changes that must come if we are to become the responsible people that we really desire to be.

Noteworthy among recent changes is our growing sense of mission and our concern for the whole man. We are becoming more concerned for suffering humanity and less fearful of “the social gospel” cry. We are indeed beginning to join the human race and to fraternize with the Christian world. We are discovering a deeper understanding of brotherhood. We are these days talking more about Bangkok and Addis Ababa and less about Nashville and Dallas.

We have begun to take the Lord’s prayer for unity more seriously. Perhaps we have thus far torn down few walls of separation, but we are at least peering across them and acknowledging that something should be done. One only needs to have experienced the difficulty of putting a unity meeting together just a few years back to realize our growth in this respect. A dramatic illustration of the difference these days is that this year Lubbock Christian College opened its facilities for this year’s Annual Unity Forum. A few years ago that same college would not allow one of its faculty to appear on a program at our premill college in Kentucky, whose president, by the way, is on this year’s program in Lubbock, along with all sorts of other awful brethren!

All these reasons, along with many more, are why I love our people, why I am Staying around, and why I believe in our future. The simple truth is that we are better than we sound. We believe in the grace of God more than our preaching would suggest, and we love people more than some of our straight-laced emphases would indicate. Now that we are beginning to gain our perspective and see ourselves from a larger frame of reference the chances for our making a substantial contribution to the renewal of modern religion are indeed bright.—the Editor.